Wagering game systems employ various techniques to present graphical representations of a wagering game on a wagering game machine display unit. For example, a sequence of images may be stored in memory and may be presented on the wagering game machine display unit. As another example, three-dimensional animations may be pre-rendered into and may be stored as two-dimensional animations. The stored images and animations may be played back in response to a player input. As yet another example, the three-dimensional animations may be generated in real-time (e.g., on detecting player input). The employed techniques influence the quality of the graphical representations of the wagering game presented on the wagering game machine display unit and the computational load.